Santiago Tejedor, Laura Cervi and María José Recoder, researchers at the Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, have published the article “What journalists think about verification tools powered by Artificial Intelligence” in Infonomy, an academic journal of scientific dissemination of Information, Documentation and Social Communication.
The article focuses on the IVERES project “Identification, Verification and Response”, promoted by Radio Televisión Española (RTVE) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), in collaboration with the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Universidad de Granada and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. IVERES focuses on creating a verification platform for image, video and social network monitoring to combat disinformation. Within the framework of this project, the paper delves into two focus groups that the Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación conducted with senior and junior journalists to learn about their experiences with the use of Artificial Intelligence tools.
Among the main conclusions, the results of both focus groups showed that journalists consider disinformation to be an emerging problem that must be addressed as a priority and that, more than ever, it reinforces journalistic work.
In this sense, the professionals agree that AI can serve as an ally to help in the verification process, however, they emphasise that work must be done to create systems capable of providing a greater degree of certainty and that are easy and accessible for the benefit of journalists and citizens in general.
The study provides a glimpse of the possibilities that AI presents for journalism professionals and the challenges that must be faced in order to make use of these technologies in an ethical and reliable manner. Both meetings, together with the development of the IVERES project, constitute valuable material for furthering the fight against disinformation.
The Gabinete de Comunicación y de Educación is a consolidated group specialised in scientific research and dissemination, which belongs to the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the UAB. Recognised by AGAUR (Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca) of the Generalitat de Catalunya as a Consolidated Research Group on the basis of its trajectory, projection and development, it develops projects and research in the field of convergence between communication and education. Since its creation, it has developed initiatives aimed at integrating, with awareness and freedom, communication technologies in the so-called global or knowledge society.
Under the direction of Santiago Tejedor, the Gabinete organises several of its own Master’s Degrees, such as the Master’s Degree in Travel Journalism (on-site and online), the Master’s Degree in Communication and Education, the Master’s Degree in Environmental Communication and the Master’s Degree in Political and Electoral Communication Management. The group has a wide and varied collection of publications, in the form of scientific articles, books and book chapters, and other works, which is constantly being renewed. It also has a laboratory for teaching innovation projects, transfer and new formats conceived and developed from a perspective based on creativity and multidisciplinary work. The Gabinete organises an academic expedition that travels worldwide annually with students from different universities and degrees. This is the Tahina-Can Expedition, awarded as the best educational project in Spain. It also has the portal Tu Aventura, the educational platform InfoEDU, the newsgames, and the science project Reporter@s de la Ciencia.
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